Age of Decadence - Public Beta Released

March 24th, 2012, 16:47

I haven't really played the demo yet. Just poked around some. Had reports to write for work last night. I have a bit of a vision problem, so I know I am not the average gamer in this regard, but I found the text difficult to read. Adjusting the resolution did not seem to help, as everything scaled with it. I spent most of my time looking through some .ini file for a way to increase the font size but did not find one. If anyone knows how I might be able to do this, I'd be glad to hear it.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
You definitely need a different mindset to most RPGs. As mentioned, there is no filler combat.

Think real life. You're a newby "adventurer" (of whatever class) - what makes you think you're equipped to take on an assassin who has presumably killed before? You haven't.

I hear what you're saying, but not having a good, clear indication how how tough I am (am I really a totally wet-behind-the ears adventurer?) or how tough the other guy is, is close to being arbitrary death.

What I would expect from a game that wants to be that way is some kind of clue that the other mob is too tough for me. Something that my character would notice; i.e. he can be described as "… looking like a veteran assassin with countless notches on his X-bow" or something like that.

Why would anyone play shit like this when you can play a real CRPG like Bioshock, CoD, and Skyrim? This game looks like a retarded baby monkey scribbled on a wall with feces. IT DOESN"T EVEN HAVE FULL VO!!!!1

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
I haven't really played the demo yet. Just poked around some. Had reports to write for work last night. I have a bit of a vision problem, so I know I am not the average gamer in this regard, but I found the text difficult to read. Adjusting the resolution did not seem to help, as everything scaled with it. I spent most of my time looking through some .ini file for a way to increase the font size but did not find one. If anyone knows how I might be able to do this, I'd be glad to hear it.

The too small font size at high resolution is on the known issues list. However, lowering the resolution to e.g. 1024x768 should help. Somebody posted a rough workaround replacing the font in the AOD folder with a bigger one, but it creates issues - I would wait for the next patch, if lowering resolution doesn't work for you.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
The too small font size at high resolution is on the known issues list. However, lowering the resolution to e.g. 1024x768 should help. Somebody posted a rough workaround replacing the font in the AOD folder with a bigger one, but it creates issues - I would wait for the next patch, if lowering resolution doesn't work for you.

Thanks for the response. Turns out 800x600 does help me out a good bit, though I'm still not a fan of the font. Though almost no game offers it, a text-size option sure would be appreciated, at least by me.

But I'm really enjoying the game so far. I like that combat is a real risk. And it doesn't seem punishingly hard to me. Granted, I'm focusing on combat skills for my first time through the demo, after reading other people's reactions. It does seem I have to specialize quite a bit. I'd appreciate some more skill points, so I might be able to create a viable hybrid character. I'll try a talker, usually my first inclination, next.

I found the combat pretty tedious. Is there any way to re-equip your weapon after being being disarmed without having to go all the way into your inventory and drag it back onto your weapon slot and then reclick on the weapon….

Originally Posted by bjon045
I found the combat pretty tedious. Is there any way to re-equip your weapon after being being disarmed without having to go all the way into your inventory and drag it back onto your weapon slot and then reclick on the weapon….

Not that I know of - but a good suggestion to make on the beta forums.

It seems like it's possible to hit a dead end in this game if you don't spend your skill points in a correct way. I was playing through the Beta again, this time as a Drifter, and I reached a point where I couldn't succeed at either of the two quests I had remaining. Unless I'm missing something, there's no possible way to continue other than to go back to an earlier save.

Originally Posted by JDR13
It seems like it's possible to hit a dead end in this game if you don't spend your skill points in a correct way. I was playing through the Beta again, this time as a Drifter, and I reached a point where I couldn't succeed at either of the two quests I had remaining. Unless I'm missing something, there's no possible way to continue other than to go back to an earlier save.

Yeah I reached a similar point too. If you don't build your character correctly you'll hit a dead end I think. I built a combat focused character and put most of my points into weapon skills, but I still wasn't strong enough to take the mine or raiding camp, and I didn't have the skills to do any dialogue options so I was pretty screwed.

I've been working with the dialogue options more lately. I think I'll give combat a try again tomorrow and see if I can figure it out.

Originally Posted by Fargol
I guess it has me worried since it was the very first "quest" of the game, and the assassin wiped the floor with me. I don't think I was given any kind of clue as to how ridiculously strong he was.

I do want to see more, so I'll likely start again and this time I'll wuss out when given the choice

Interesting, I played an assassin and the guy guarding the merchant kept wiping the floor with me

Will have to do some research on a better character build, perhaps. I tried putting all my skill points into daggers and critical strike, but the only way to get past the first combat encounter quest was by passing a persuasion check to avoid the combat entirely.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
I tried it out. The graphics are nice and impressive, but I couldn't get over the clunky and awkward camera system. It just was too cumbersome and annoying after a short time of playing to want to deal with. I did like the graphics as I said, some of the art style as well was good, and the story line seemed cool, but it isn't for me because of the camera control I'm afraid.

The camera control was a bit annoying, but the non-linear quests and relatively open city map were fun enough to keep me interested.

I want to like it but I can't. I mean, this is Lionheart all over again.
I used to think Lionheart would be a better game with turn based system, this doesn't turn out to be the case.

I understand lethality is important to establish but at times, I just felt exchanging 20 attacks between two combatants is a bit much. They're still standing after that, too. Seeing numbers like 2-3 dmg and DR absorb 5 every round with 50% chance of hit & miss kinda kills the enthusiasm. I thought maybe I should go for aimed attacks - nope the % is too low. Why bother?

Then going through skill checks after skill checks that force the player to SAVE game before investing skill points else he'll meet a dead end somewhere along the game.

There are some positives, but damn, it's overwhelmingly obvious that some fun is missing here. Personally, I won't buy this game after this demo. Too much 'powergaming' for my tastes. Either that, or I must know how the 'GM' mind works else I'll face a dead end.

Will have to do some research on a better character build, perhaps. I tried putting all my skill points into daggers and critical strike, but the only way to get past the first combat encounter quest was by passing a persuasion check to avoid the combat entirely.

Been a while since I did that one (and difficulty may have changed), but I remember getting by with a high DEX, high PER, high dodge Character with a few points in CS, IIRC.
Most of the time I used the CS skillcheck option, though.

Originally Posted by Grimlorn
Yeah I reached a similar point too. If you don't build your character correctly you'll hit a dead end I think. I built a combat focused character and put most of my points into weapon skills, but I still wasn't strong enough to take the mine or raiding camp, and I didn't have the skills to do any dialogue options so I was pretty screwed.

I've been working with the dialogue options more lately. I think I'll give combat a try again tomorrow and see if I can figure it out.

Yes at least in the demo you can reach dead ends. I think in the full game you could just move on to the next city, which would auto-resolve any unsolved quests in Teron, and try your luck there - but you can't "beat" the demo this way.

Combat is bone-hard - be prepared to experiment with stats, skills, and tactics a lot before you can even win your first fight. There is strategy advice on the ITS forums, if you want to get into it a bit more quickly.

Originally Posted by JonNik
Edit2: I have to point out though that this will probably be a very short game if one takes the non-combat route, or at least that is the impression I got. I am never too thrilled for very short games but this one's strength seems to be in replaying to try out all the different approaches and CnC and I' am all for replays

That transition to extremely short games where even the 20 or so hours you do invest in them is mostly spent on experimenting with "choices" and the assumption that players should replay games numerous times is one of the things that killed my enjoyment of RPGs. It's an unfortunate choice indeed for people who have enthusiastically and unapologetically decided to to go retro have also decided to implement one of the worst of the "new" ideas. Especially after a 10 year or whatever wait to get the game out the door. The only games I've actually *enjoyed* playing through numerous times were titles like Jagged Alliance (I enjoyed the combat THAT much) and Total War (completely different game every time, even if you play the same faction again).

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Combat is bone-hard - be prepared to experiment with stats, skills, and tactics a lot before you can even win your first fight. There is strategy advice on the ITS forums, if you want to get into it a bit more quickly.

Sounds good. That's the way combat should be in every single-player RPG. Every multiplayer RPG, too, for that matter. How many fans of old school tabletop gaming would have given D&D more than a passing glance if all there was to do was blindly steamroll your way through locations, gather up the loot, and listen to a pimply dork attempting to be a world-class storyteller? It was the tactical combat that made all that other stuff worthwhile. This is actually the one thing I've heard about this game that sounds promising, but I don't have much interest in learning all the ins and outs of a brutally difficult combat system just to beat a game in 10 hours that took 10 years to develop.